


Her Name Was...

by PseudonymousBotched



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universes, Angst, Freeform, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Doctor, Oneshot, Other, Pete's World, Time gets rewritten, people get erased, the doctor uses they/them pronouns, there is so much angst here and i will apologize for exactly NONE of it, wibbly wobbly timey wimey, y'know typical Doctor Who stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 01:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9151168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudonymousBotched/pseuds/PseudonymousBotched
Summary: Where exactly did the Doctor go before they came back to offer Rose a trip in the TARDIS?





	

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't beta'd, sorry if you saw any of the mistakes.

It was an accident, really. They certainly didn’t mean to fall between worlds and plunge through the void, trailing smoke and bits of stardust in their wake. Must’ve been a rift between the universes. One that hadn’t healed up properly. Just the tiniest of cracks, enough for their ship to slip through on the way by.

The TARDIS landed more haphazardly than usual, and the Doctor had more than a few bruises from being knocked about. Smoke billowed out as they opened the door and stumbled forward, coughing.

Luckily their TARDIS was bursting at the seams with power, having recently refueled, and the ship patiently reassured them through the telepathic link that the return trip to the proper universe is possible and certainly won’t take very long to calculate.

And being the curious sort, and having found themselves in a parallel universe that was entirely open for exploring, they of course went to explore it. And whose path should they cross but that of one Rose Tyler.

In so many ways, she is exactly the same as the one they briefly met in their own world. The Doctor would have thought that being the daughter of a millionaire businessman would have turned her head a bit, but this Rose is still gentle. Still kind. Still extends a warm smile to a stranger, tongue touching the corner of her lip. Still takes their hand and holds it with fierce intensity.

And yet, she’s different. This Rose is fiercer, faster, cleverer. There is something feral about this girl, something less forgiving. She is not one to stand and scream. This one fights from the very beginning. It began with Autons here too, and a moldering shop basement, and Rose Tyler using a broken off plastic arm like a cricket bat to knock off the head of a mannequin that was impossibly advancing on her. Backed into a corner and she came out snarling. 

The Doctor likes this one. She doesn’t take long to adjust. Hardly even blinks when she realizes the person beside her, holding her hand, is an alien. Just grips their fingers a little tighter, and stares down the Nestene Consciousness at their side. 

That’s how it began, really. That’s how it all began. That’s the moment their adventures began, the moment in the tale they would always revisit breathlessly reminiscing to each other in the off hours, the moments between narrow escapes and intriguing getting-intos.

In between dodging Judoon firing squads and dismantling Zygon conspiracies, the Doctor drank in the everyday moments with Rose. Her lip gloss shining in the twilight of the TARDIS. Her eyes twinkling when she looked out on a planet or asteroid or star she’d never seen before. Her nose crinkling when she laughed her most honest and unpretentious laugh. Her deep and abiding love for chips, no matter what alien form they took, and how she loved best eating them on the doorstep, swinging her feet in stardust. The weight of her head on their shoulder as she leaned into them. Contentment, as they looked out upon the universe together.

It was an accident, really. They certainly hadn’t meant to send her into danger. They weren’t even really sure what happened - it was all fragmented inside their head. The memories didn’t line up properly around the edges. Time had been rewritten, and only one thing remained clear. Although the Doctor had saved that planet, they had lost Rose.

Rose was gone, and they hadn’t even been able to hold her as she died. There wasn’t a body. She simply didn’t exist anymore. She’d been erased from history.

The universe warped around her absence. Came together again, covering the raw edges of the wound, and continued on. Life wasn’t much disturbed - what’s the addition or subtraction of just one more rich girl? Her parents were never the same. They weren’t even parents anymore, although they didn’t remember why that should be significant. There was something inexplicably missing between Pete and Jackie Tyler, and the space between them splintered and strained. And the Doctor was a little more quiet. A little more aware that they were in the wrong world.

The power supplies of the TARDIS were running low anyway. They needed to make the return trip and go back to their world. As they flipped the final lever and flew away, they were made aware by the TARDIS that the rift was closing behind them. They were leaving behind everything familiar to Rose, the air she had breathed, the things she had touched. And the world became that little bit less kind.

They hadn’t thought about the coordinates they used, had simply typed up the first ones for their own world that came to mind. As the wheezing, groaning of the time rotor slowed to a halt, they stared at the screen. It finally processed when and where they were.

They cleared their throat, straightened their jacket. Opened the door.

And there she was. The Rose that wasn’t their Rose.

“And did I mention - it also travels in time?” they asked.

And the Rose that wasn’t their Rose smiled, and it made their hearts do a strange little lurch in their chest, because it was that familiar smirk that had been flashed in their direction before so many times before someone got into mischief.

She might not be their Rose, but she was close enough.


End file.
